Beth Myers, who spearheaded Mitt Romney’s vice president search, said the GOP presidential nominee talked not only to his top advisers but also “friends from all walks of his life” in making his decision to choose Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

“He solicits the advice of a small group of his advisers but then he asks everybody he meets, you know, ‘What’s your thought on this?’ He listens — he asks sort of the people you wouldn’t think he’d ask about it,” Myers said in an interview with CNN earlier this week that aired Saturday after Romney made the official announcement. “He calls friends from all walks of his life, all across the country, wanting to know what they think, he listens to them.”

She noted, “Obviously his qualification is that the person is qualified to be president and perceived to be qualified to be president.”

Myers said in the interview with CNN that the VP vetting process showcased how deeply “methodical” Romney’s decision-making process is.

“First of all, he wants all the information and we went about a very thorough process in making sure that we had a lot of information about a broad group,” she said. “He also doesn’t like to rule anything out … We got a good cut of information about a lot of people. He then narrowed it down, and we got even more information. We got personal information from each of the potential candidates and at that point, again, we had some attorneys look through and go through everybody’s record — to make sure — I didn’t want to miss anything about them.”

“And then Mitt took these candidate dossiers and thought about them. He read them all of them word for word,” she added.

Putting an end to weeks of speculation, Romney announced from the U.S.S. Wisconsin – a historic battleship in Norfolk, Va. — his decision to name the House Budget Committee from the Badger State his running mate.

Others on Romney’s shortlist of potential VP picks had included several of Ryan’s colleagues on Capitol Hill, including Sens. Rob Portman and Marco Rubio.